Monogatari Series - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.17

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In my third year of high school, when I’d been fighting with the aftereffects of my vampirism (or perhaps fighting against it), I’d gotten rather used to the idea of dying.

In hindsight, I had relied too much on that vampiric immortality, which had remained pronounced even after I’d returned to human form. In other words, I’d been dependent on it.

I’d become addicted to death.

In the end, even though I’d managed to hit upon that one-in-a-million chance of returning to human form, I had found myself spontaneously turning into a full-fledged vampire, even without my blood being sucked—it was kind of like a rebound, or perhaps I was just an idiot who didn’t learn his lesson.

The reason Gaen-san chopped my body up into pieces and dropped me into hell was to separate my soul from that immortal nature, that oddity nature, but thinking about it now, maybe I was about to make the same mistake again.

Just as I had grown accustomed to death.

If I ended up growing accustomed to going to hell—then saying that it was fine because it was my second time, or that I’m used to it… Those wouldn’t just be jokes.

Ougi-chan would laugh at me, saying, “How foolish you are”, while Oikura would get mad at me, saying, “You should just die”.

Anyway, so this fool that didn’t learn his lesson would once again reach out his hand and step foot into a tour of hell that could shatter mankind’s view of life and death—

“…Huh?”

When I awoke, or perhaps when I entered into eternal sleep, I found myself in heaven.

Heaven.

Or maybe it was paradise, or the pure land, or perhaps Eden.

There were many ways to describe it, but anyway, the fantastical landscape that sprawled out before my eyes was completely different from the one I had seen when I’d last been sliced up, and it was one that I had never seen before… What in the world?

Normally, I would describe it as a beauty that could not be painted, but the scene—this landscape filled with light—looked as if I’d entered into a painting. Or, to put it another way, I had only seen such a scene before in paintings.

If I had to make use of my poor vocabulary, well, I guess I could say it was a beautiful example of Mother Nature… But the impression I got was more, “Is it okay for someone like me to be here?” I felt really out of place.

Out of place, and just wrong.

As if I’d accidentally wandered into the jewelry area of a department store.

With rolling green plains, a mountain range with distinctive ridges far off in the distance, and not a single cloud in the beautiful blue sky—the trees were lush and ripe with fruit, and the flowers were in full, multicolored bloom.

Even the air was delicious.

I wasn’t a hermit that could live off of breathing mist, but it felt like just by inhaling, I could add a hundred years to my lifespan… Although, far from extending my lifespan, wasn’t I supposed to have lost my life after being cut into pieces?

Wasn’t I supposed to have fallen to hell?

“Urk… So basically, instead of falling to hell, I messed up and went to heaven? Ah, jeez, this is a problem. I guess whoever’s watching is watching what I do on a regular basis.”

“That’s exactly right. You aren’t as bad of a person as you think you are.”

In order to break out of my confusion and break down the current situation, I tried to calm myself down by muttering something stupid (my self-control technique—surprisingly effective), but to my surprise, even though I’d thought no one was nearby, a voice spoke from behind.

Someone caught me talking to myself!

Normally, I would’ve ended up writhing in shame, but the gentle voice, as clear as (or even clearer than) the air around me, calmed me down as opposed to agitating me—I turned around.

The fact that there was a naked beautiful woman there did not make me lose my cool, either.

After a naked little girl, a naked beautiful woman.

What a series of events.

However, just like how the naked little girl was a mummy, the naked beautiful woman also had a third condition—or rather, more strictly speaking, I couldn’t determine if the naked beautiful woman was a true beauty or not.

Because the beauty was wearing a demon mask.

A demon mask… To expand it into more words, a mask with a demon’s face.

An adult woman that was liberally nude, but whose face was completely hidden by a mask… After finishing high school and entering college, I’d had a hint of hope that my life would become more adult in the future, but it had proceeded to become more adult in a strange way.

Not just lewd in the way I had hoped, but erotic and grotesque in an Edogawa Ranpo sort of way.

“……”

However, was it just my imagination?

That adult woman… That masked, fully nude beauty… I felt like I’d met her before. Even though I couldn’t see her face, I could see her long, long blonde hair coming out from behind her mask, and her beautiful body lines that made her seem as if she was closed in a thin robe, even if she wasn’t wearing anything. I felt like I had seen her before…

“I apologize for the way I look, Araragi-sama.”

Oh my.

Though I didn’t say it out loud.

I wasn’t sent into a panic, but I was honestly not sure how to react to the gentle voice coming from behind the mask… Was this person someone I knew?

Was that even possible, considering where we were?

Since she had a demon mask, maybe this was hell after all? Was she one of hell’s tormentors? If you hit the books, you’ll find that hell really is full of diversity, encompassing every possible variation… Among those, there might even be a hell where a tall, sexy, naked, blonde, buxom beauty wears a demon mask and tortures the dead.

“I’m embarrassed to have appeared before you wearing a mask.”

She seemed more ashamed of hiding her face than of exposing her nakedness—well, I’d suspected her of being a tormentor of hell, but this beautiful woman, like the landscape that stretched out behind her, looked like a woman that had been depicted in an artistic painting, and there was not a sliver of guilt or indecency anywhere on her body.

Or rather, I even felt that this landscape had actually been made for the sake of this beautiful woman—that was how much her naked body shined.

Perhaps, in actuality, if she hadn’t been wearing a demon mask, the eyes of someone like me would have been blinded by the brilliance… Ah, is that why she’s hiding her face like this?

So that her beauty wouldn’t hurt me—her beauty?

“P—Princess Beauty?”

“Yes. There are those that call me by that name. But while you are here, I would like it if you called me Princess Acerola.”

That was what she said.

That was what she—before she was Oshino Shinobu, before she was even Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade—Princess Acerola, a literal beauty who had destroyed her country with her unparalleled physical and mental beauty—said.

That was what the beautiful woman in heaven said.